hit our reviewer Phil’s funny bone pretty hard<\/a>, but (like most of Hess’ output) seems to be an acquired taste. <\/p>\n‘Queen of Katwe<\/strong>‘ \u2013 The latest in Disney’s never-ending string of sentimental feel-good movies vaguely based on true stories is about a poor Ugandan girl who becomes an unexpected chess master. Disney’s triumph-over-adversity formula for these things is pretty rigid, but director Mira Nair (‘Monsoon Wedding’) is said to make this one work better than most. <\/p>\n‘Boo! A Madea Halloween<\/strong>‘ \u2013 No, I don’t understand how Tyler Perry is still making ‘Madea’ movies. All I can say is that they’re not made for me and neither Perry nor his actual intended audience cares whether I understand them. This ninth entry (fifteenth if you count the recorded plays) even topped the box office the week of its debut, and was a rebound after the disappointment of ‘A Madea Christmas’.<\/p>\nCatalog Titles<\/h2>\n
Disney pulls it classic ‘Pinocchio<\/strong>‘ out of the vault for a reissue as part of the Signature Collection line. Also making return appearances are ‘Lilo & Stitch<\/strong>‘, ‘The Fox and the Hound<\/strong>‘ (both paired with their DTV sequels) and ‘Bolt<\/strong>‘.<\/p>\nExcavated from the Warner Archive this week is the 1960 Dean Martin\/Judy Holliday musical ‘Bells Are Ringing <\/strong>‘.<\/p>\nThey’re heeeeeeeeere\u2026 agaaaaaaaaain. In an ongoing effort to rehabilitate the reputations of undervalued horror sequels, Scream Factory gives ‘Poltergeist II: The Other Side<\/strong>‘ and ‘Poltergiest III<\/strong>‘ the Collector’s Edition treatment.<\/p>\nFor its Vestron Collector’s Series, Lionsgate digs up one of the weirdest horror movies ever made with Ken Russell’s 1988 ‘The Lair of the White Worm<\/strong>‘. Amada Donohoe from ‘L.A. Law’ stars as a snake-worshipping vampire whore demon who runs around topless impaling nuns with a strap-on spike dildo. At some point, Jesus (yes, the<\/em> Jesus) is strangled on the cross by a giant snake with a penis face. No, I am not making this up. I can’t say that the movie is good, at all. However, it’s very campy and schlocky, and showcases Russell (a provocateur who loved to push people’s buttons) at some of his most demented and unhinged. <\/p>\nLionsgate’s other Vestron title this week is Bob Balaban’s 1989 dark comedy horror flick ‘Parents<\/strong>‘, in which a young boy discovers that his picture-perfect 1950s suburban parents (Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt) are cannibals.<\/p>\nTelevision<\/h2>\n
HBO delivers the second season of Dwayne Johnson’s laugh-free “comedy” ‘Ballers<\/strong>‘, while also following through with a SteelBook reissue of ‘Game of Thrones<\/strong>‘ Season 5.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, PBS has the first season of the British period piece ‘Victoria<\/strong>‘.<\/p>\nMy $.02<\/h2>\n
I will happily sit this week out. The only titles of any interest to me (that I don’t already own prior copies of) are the two Vestron flicks, neither of which I feel a desperate need to own. <\/p>\n
How about you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
January this year crawls to a close with only a smattering of new Blu-ray releases, none of them too exciting (in my book). The most notable is also the most ironically titled movie of last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":82803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[5239,8239,67,6375,2810,5366,4206,4207,6470,2803,9185,4738,194,6433,9169,1428],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82801"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82808,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82801\/revisions\/82808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}